David Rice’s Aggro Loam deck took on all comers and came out unscathed. His powerful deck and solid play has earned him the right to be called Open Series champion, joining Standard Open champion Dustin Taylor as the #SCGRI‘s big winners. We hope you all had fun this weekend, the first Open Series weekend to pay out $10,000 in each open, and we hope to see many of you next weekend in Madison, Wisconsin. For all of us at StarCityGames.com and @SCGLive, thank you and good night!

Two favorable matchups against conventional decks put Dave Rice and his Aggro Loam deck through to the finals, while Paul Ewenstein’s Pod Rock/Nic-Fit deck had slogged through a pair of tough ones. They met up in the finals to duke it out for the Legacy Open title and a nice little payday.

The matchup between Dave’s Aggro Loam and Greg’s Elves promised to be a quick and dirty affair. Elves was going to have a hard time outgrinding the resilient board control deck so Greg would need to assemble either his combo kill or a very aggressive draw in a hurry.

From James Vari’s vantage point, his opponent Andrew Maag was a cool, calm and collected character looking to potentially steal his spot in the Top 8. That Andrew had won the die roll and James had to take a pair of mulligans before finding a playable hand didn’t help James’ case any.

A classic battle was brewing between these northeast players. It was Boston versus New York, the Red Sox against the Yankees, U/R Delver (though Shiels wants his deck to be called RUG Insectile Aberration instead) taking on Esper Stoneblade.

At this point RUG is a known quantity to anyone familiar with Legacy—it’s all Delver of Secrets, Nimble Mongoose, Tarmogoyf, some burn, some disruption and loads of great cards up and down a tight 75-card list. The deck doesn’t mess around, and it’s been putting up great results.

Which form of red-green would take the day? Would it be Dustin’s quick, aggressive version with Strangleroot Geist and Sword of War and Peace? Or would it be Chris’ titan-heavy version featuring seven game-breaking sixes? We’re going to find out one way or another right here.

“This’ll do,” Bryant said after taking a mulligan to start things off. He had piloted his U/W Delver deck to the top of the standings after the swiss and therefore earned the right to play first throughout the Top 8, and he would need all the extra time he could get in this matchup against Dustin’s R/G Aggro deck

Ross Merriam, who came close to winning an Open in Baltimore, was forced to take a mulligan before starting things off with a “free” Gitaxian Probe. Veteran mage Jim Davis—representing his home town with a New York Rangers jersey—stoically flipped over his hand and nodded when Delver of Secrets entered play, not appearing to be bothered one bit.

A simple “yup” was all it took for us to get underway with Chris leading with a pair of tapped lands in Isolated Chapel and Drowned Catacomb. His Esper Control went on the aggressive with a third turn Lingering Souls followed by the back half on the next turn.